190. Redemption

ALL living creatures’ pain,

The suffering of the lowliest thing that creeps

Or flies a moment ere it sinks and sleeps,

Are too Redemption’s tears and not in vain—

For nothing idly weeps.

Earth is through these fulfilling that it must

As in Christ’s own eternal Passion chain,

And flowering from the dust.

The driven and drudging ass

Crushed by the bondage of its bitter round,

Repeats the Gospel in that narrow bound;

God is reflected in the blade of grass,

And there is Calvary’s ground.

O not an insect or on leaf or sod

But in its measure is a looking-glass,

And shows Salvation’s God.

All thus are carrying on,

And do work out, the one Redemption’s tale;

Each is a little Christ on hill or dale,

The hell where Mercy’s light has never shone

Is with that Mercy pale,

And though flesh turns from agony they dread,

Even as they groan and travail it is gone—

Love riseth from the dead.